Yolo DA seeks $500,000 bail in Davis hate crime case

Calling the defendant “an extreme danger to the community,” the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office on Thursday filed a motion to increase the bail for Davis hate crime suspect Clayton Daniel Garzón and to speed up his arraignment date.

Deputy District Attorney Garrett Hamilton says “changed circumstances” call for Garzón’s bail to be raised from $75,000 to $500,000, given the seriousness of the charges he faces, not to mention his pending assault case in neighboring Solano County.

A hearing on the issue is set for 1:30 p.m. Monday in Yolo Superior Court.

Garzón, who turns 20 on Friday, has been charged with felony counts of battery, assault and criminal threats in connection with the March 10 beating of 32-year-old Davis resident Lawrence “Mikey” Partida on I Street. Each count carries a hate-crime enhancement alleging that Garzon targeted Partida because of his sexual orientation.

“He is clearly a danger to our county, and therefore his bail should reflect that circumstance,” Hamilton wrote in a declaration in support of the bail increase.

Hamilton noted that the charges filed by his office this week are “strike” offenses, and that the Yolo County jail failed to account for a hate-crime charge and a great bodily injury enhancement when it set the $75,000 bail figure last week.

Garzón posted bail and was freed within several hours of his March 14 arrest.

Hamilton also asks that Garzón’s arraignment be moved up from its currently scheduled date of April 12, “with public safety at issue in this case,” the declaration says.

The bail increase motion was filed on the same day that a judge in Solano County, where Garzón had been free on his own recognizance on the unrelated assault charge, boosted his bail in that case to $25,000, a quarter of the $100,000 figure reportedly requested by the prosecutor.

As a result, Garzón was remanded in court and lodged at the Solano County Jail, where he remained in custody as of Thursday afternoon. He faces a single count of assault with a deadly weapon in connection with a September 2012 brawl in Dixon in which four young men were stabbed and a fifth suffered head trauma.

Garzón has retained high-profile Sacramento defense attorney Linda Parisi to represent him in the Yolo County case. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, she declined to comment on the bail motion.

“I haven’t had an opportunity to review the pleadings,” Parisi said. “As soon as I do that I can comment more fully.”